By: Peter Cafaro
The US is a very proud country. We like to celebrate the glory that is our country with several holidays, and we all have some amount of patriotism but not nearly as much as we did in the past. Back then, everyone was gung-ho about patriotism, and it was expected of everyone to be that way, but there was a turning point when there was a sharp decline in this feeling towards the US. The Vietnam War was fascinating when it comes to whether or not we should have been involved. Many, many people had died during this war and we as a country weren’t all for this war. There was an anti-war movement that happened during the Vietnam War. Many controversies were brought to public view, like the My Lai Massacre, where a US army unit sexually assaulted and killed civilians, and The Green Beret Affair, where Special Forces soldiers were arrested for the murder of a suspected double agent, which proved outrage throughout the globe.
Most of the protests had subsided after the Paris Peace Accords were signed. With the end of the war came a time when the US was trying to rally back this American patriotism, so they had a contest to build a memorial after one of their recent wars, where a Yale student named Maya Lin won and got to make a memorial for the Vietnam war. This memorial was built into the side of a hill with black granite slabs with the engraving of all the names of the service members who died or were missing because of the war. It was completed in 1982 and has been under contention for a while. In current times, it is seen as a way to remember those who we had lost during the brutal war, but back then it was not so simple.
Before we get into the controversy, let’s talk about Maya Lin. She is an American Architect born in 1959 who graduated from Yale University. She won acclaim due to her winning the competition in 1981 and building the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She was best known for her minimalist approach to architecture style. This style had attracted controversy at first. Besides the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, she has also had many other works made including the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. She had also made the Women’s table in front of the Yale library which celebrates the role of women at the University. This is to say that she has had quite an impact on memorials around the US, and it all started with her big break from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The design was controversial because of a lot of the veterans found it to be “anti-monument” and violating the competition requirement that the monument was nonpolitical. It was under so much scrutiny that they called the memorial “a black gash of shame and sorrow.” Since there was so much public outcry over the monument, they had another person create a memorial to sate the public’s need for a “real” war memorial. Fredrick Hart, the third-place winner of the contest, was commissioned to make a bronze sculpture of three soldiers. Many of Lin’s opponents wanted to put the statue at the apex of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial but it was never put there.
One thing to note about the construction of this monument is a couple of the norms it breaks all in one. First of all, it is composed of black granite slabs. The average memorial or monument for the time was made of marble or white rock material. This black granite resembles the tone that you should feel when going into the memorial since it is less of a memorial for lionizing a war and more so about remembering who was lost over the war. Second, the construction of the wall was made in a specific way as well. When you start at the entrance, you are at ground level and the farther you get to the crux of the “V”, the lower in elevation you get. You then rise from the “V” as you leave the memorial. This subtle, yet important inclusion is supposed to represent a “wound that is closed and healing.” This is another breaking of the norm because there usually isn’t this kind of symbolism in the memorials of its time. The symbolic gash on the side of the earth represents the pain caused by the casualties and the war itself. Third and most obvious, the memorial isn’t of one specific person. This memorial is meant for everyone who had been lost or dead during the war, so this is very unlike many of the memorials of the time.
This is all to say that the memorial was not your typical memorial. It was opposing the ideas of the time and was the start of the turning point for the US in the fact that this is the first modern memorial of its time. It goes out of its way to be different and more so for the masses than just one person really shows. It is taken this way as well, for example, a ritual had started to happen where people left their sentimental belongings at the entrance of the memorial for those who had died. This memorial started a genre of sorts. There have been other memorials that have taken to its liking, like the Northwood Gratitude and Honor Memorial. This was a memorial that was built after the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. It chronologically lists the dead in black granite slabs. The impact that the Vietnam War memorial has had on this one is quite evident.
As said before, there have been quite a few contentions with the memorial itself, which has led to some minor acts of vandalism. One of these acts was made in April of 1988, where a swastika and other scratches were found in two of the panels. Another sight of vandalism was in 1993, when the directory stand at the entrance of the memorial was burned. One of the last reported cases was on September 7th, 2007, where an oily substance was smeared across 50-60 of the granite panels. This was described as an “act of vandalism on one of America’s sacred places” by the Memorial Fund founder, Jan Scruggs. It is quite shocking that there are still these vandalisms nowadays considering we regard this as one of the most venerated monuments of our time.
Today we see the monument very differently from how it was seen back then. Today, this is one of the most solemn places where many go to honor the losses of the war which were many and tragic. Many people opposed the war but at the end of the day, the many losses because of the war are what brings us all together for this memorial. It has the same feeling that a lot of my generation feels about the 9/11 memorial in the fact that it also honors, but more so mourning the loss of lives. In the case of the 9/11 memorial, is more known to my generation just because of when it occurred and how many lives were affected because of it, as well as the fact that it happened on American soil. That isn’t to say that nobody from my generation was affected by the Vietnam War, I am one of those people. My grandfather had fought and died in the war. At the time my mother was 12 and that heavily impacted her family as well as me growing up because I never knew why I didn’t have another grandfather. I never knew the man myself but now knowing this knowledge has given me a new sense of appreciation for the memorial. I know that on that wall somewhere my grandfathers is on there and I feel for all who have been affected by this war.
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